CHINA’S ASIAN DREAM: Empire Building along the New Silk RoadGEOCULTURAL POWER: China’s Quest to Revive the Silk Roads for the Twenty-First Century

Since its launch, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the China-led economic and cultural development strategy, captured impressive media and scholarly attention and critiques. Whether for its ability to offer an alternative model of economic integration and cooperation—for the amount of fundings and financing mobilized—or for its open challenge to Western-led global governance institutions, BRI is now central in a wide array of academic disciplines, ranging from international relations via economics, law, public policy, to geography. The two books under review provide a critical and in-depth analysis of the BRI, particularly relevant for the readers of Geographical Review. Miller, senior Asia analyst at Gavekal Group, in the second edition of China’s Asian Dream published in 2019, assesses how China, with the BRI, attempts to regain centrality in the international order (Miller 2019). The second edition only slightly modifies the 2017 text by adding a short preface and including in the conclusion’s references to the Trump presidency and its position on China. The BRI focused, especially in the time frame analyzed by the author (2014–2015), on China’s quest for energy and natural resources. Whether securing access to energy and natural resources, or reducing geopolitical risks as in the case of the development of Gwadar and Kyaukphyu, energy plays a pivotal role in the BRI. The book, after offering a background to the BRI, moves the analysis to the focus of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on its western regions, in particular Xinjiang. The book is organized around Asian’s subregions and uncovers how the BRI is spreading in Central (chapter 2), South (chapter 5), and Southeast (chapter 3, 4, and 6) Asia. Miller connects the China’s “Go-West” policy with the rise of infrastructure financing as a key component of the international donor community where China is taking the lead. Chinese policy banks and stateowned enterprises are for the author the “real” actors behind the implementation of the BRI. The author skillfully combines interviews conducted during extensive travel in Asia, with insightful and rich geopolitical and geoeconomics observations. Local stories of people experiencing the materiality of Chinese power coupled with interviews with the Chinese expat community living in Asian countries shed light on the complexity of the BRI. Miller considers the BRI as the coronation of the economic resurgence of the country. For the CPC